Christie’s has announced that it will auction in London next month a letter stating that the Austrian composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was feeling “total panic” about his love life.
The two-page letter was written by the musician, in the summer of 1782, and appears to have been seeking advice from a close friend after a “misunderstanding” arose with his daughter, who soon became his wife.
Thomas Fenning, head of books and manuscripts at Christie’s, said: “She was about to go to the police to retrieve his fiancée, which would expose his reputation to dire consequences.”
He added, “He was in a major crisis and expresses what is inside him with full transparency.”
Mozart wrote many oratorios, but Fenning said that it was rare for any of them to be offered for sale at auction, and it was rare to reach this “degree of depth…into his character…and his feelings at a crucial time in his life”.
Mozart wrote that speech, at the age of 26, shortly after his arrival in Vienna. While his career was in its infancy after he had achieved a resounding success in his operatic debut, his love life was “getting a bit complicated” and he was keen to move forward with his later marriage to Constanze.
“It tells you something about Mozart as a revolutionary,” Vinning said. “He’s a character who doesn’t obey the old rules.”
Mozart married Constanze shortly after writing the letter and they remained together until his death, in 1791, at the age of 35.
The speech is to be shown as part of Christie’s Week of Extraordinary Classics in July and is expected to attract the highest price for a Mozart speech to date, with estimates ranging from 300,000 to 500,000 pounds ($380,490 to $634,150).
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2023-06-15 00:36:36